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Thursday, August 05, 2010
Look on My Works, Ye Mighty, and Despair
BOREPATCH ALWAYS has something to say, and generally says it well. I don’t comment nearly as often as I should, because I really don’t have much to add. And, true, Wednesday’s essay is no exception. But I have a tangent to throw on the pile.
That’s not a tangent; that’s a non sequitur.
Right. That wasn’t my tangent. This is:
I have a solution to the problem of an overwhelmingly large Federal Bureaucracy. It is one that will be viewed and demogogued as draconian (by people with no clue how the actual Draco would have dealt with them), but I view that as a feature. You can tell when you’ve made a hit when your opponent yelps at the sting.
Freeze Federal spending. No baseline budgeting, no current-services baseline. Freeze. Not one dollar more next year than this.
Disable (opposite of Enable) those departments viewed In the Right as being dedicated to unconstitutional purposes. Render without force those regulations the department has promulgated via the Federal Register. Don’t shut them down, simply remove their authority to act. Forbid their bureaucrats to interact with the public. Freeze their budgets. Freeze their hiring. Allow their work force to draw down by attrition. Permit those who remain to serve out their careers in office at their current levels of compensation and benefits—no increases. Permit them to draw the benefits promised them. But deny them any purpose in their vocations. Nor may they be hired by any government department left enabled.
No. New. Spending. New revenues are to go toward paying off the national debt—including unfunded obligations, such as Social Security and Medicare.
What departments would be on your list?
What do you reckon we could save?
Politicians talk about hard choices, about having to make the politically tough decisions. Do you suppose, if the people demanded this with the kind of clarity shown this week in Missouri, those choices would be a tad less hard? Politically… more tender?
People threaten that we cannot vote the leviathan state out of existence. How sweet would it be to prove them wrong?
Cross-posted at BabyTrollBlog.
Comments
*All* departments not directly mappable to the enumerated powers of the executive branch, buh-bye.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/05/2010 at 06:37 AMMark, thanks for the kind words.
Turning many Agencies into Leper Colonies is something that I’ve been thinking on for quite some time.
The one amplification I would add is that there is still ambition within the ranks of the bureaucracy; using this public humiliation pour encourager les autres is a tool not lightly to be discarded.
Posted by Borepatch on 08/05/2010 at 10:55 AMA more surgical but still massive approach would be better. Eliminate some of the unnecessary departments like the Department of Education and Department of Energy, etc. Looking carefully at each department to be eliminated to make sure useful sub-programs within them are not thrown out with the bath water. Additionally require management at all level in the federal government to create a list of their least productive employees and said list must contain at least 10% of their work force and then fire those workers. Probably not perfect or even sometimes fair but a 10% is necessary and some criteria should be used other then “last hired first fired”. I would specifically exempt the FBI, ICE and border patrol. I would however require that federal law enforcement improve their use of manpower and eliminate as many administrative positions as possible. Create a lean and effective federal government and eliminate wasteful spending.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/05/2010 at 12:08 PMYou are too soft, but yes, starvation and strangulation of money would be effective.
I would live to see the life blood of the Leviathan dry up and watch it wither away.
I agree with RandyB, if it can’t be supported by the Constitution, kill the funding.
Posted by Russell on 08/05/2010 at 12:28 PMI think you could make a decent argument for all the agencies beyond the original four: State, Defense (War), Treasury and Justice.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/05/2010 at 12:45 PMGWTW;
The idea, which I suppose I should have made plainer, is to undercut resistance—the old Washington Monument defense, at least in part. The idea is not to throw out all those loyal and faithful government employees into the cold, cold storm, merely to limit the damage they can do.
I would argue with you on particulars. There are many things government can do, but there are none that have been rationally identified (as opposed to emotionally defended) as being things that government can do better or more efficiently than the private sector. On that score, I would argue that even some functions the Constitution contemplates as being permitted (Post Office, I’m looking at YOU) that the government, it has been demonstrated, does poorly, inefficiently, and with limited benefit to the commonweal.
As for the FBI, DEA, et al, the Constitution does not grant the Federal Government police powers. ANd, as we all know, the tenth amendment effectively demands that that which is not mandatory is forbidden. Police powers should rest with the sovereign—i.e., the People and the States.
Border patrol and customs and immigration are demi-military functions which I agree probably ought to be left to the government—at least for now.
But this list idea is for you-all. Have fun with it. Get specific!
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 08/05/2010 at 02:02 PM“But deny them any purpose in their vocations.”
They came to terms with this about six weeks after they went to work for the Federal Government when they realized that their education, any prior experience, etc. meant nothing at all. This is because the Federal Government actually produces nothing at all, not a cotton picking thing! All it does is to look busy and waste an immense amount of money (I speak as a retired GS-13).
GWTW suggested that lists of least effective workers should be drawn up. Realistically, this is impossible. Lists could be drawn up of politically least popular workers, those management would most like to lose, but “least effective” is simply undefined in an organization with absolutely no work output goals.
Lest you think I am talking through my hat, let me say that I spent almost seven miserable years working for the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Carderock Division, a supposed Navy R&D;organization. In all that time, I had almost no useful work assigned to do, even though I repeatedly asked to be put on some project or other. Had I realized what the name of the game was, I would have seized the opportunity to write several books. One of my colleagues has written a tell-all about what goes on at NSWCCD, and it is all true. This organization, and all other government “R&D;” need to be closed down completely. They are frauds.
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/05/2010 at 04:37 PMNo, no, no. Or at least, in the physics sense, the proposal, whether as amended or no, is “not even wrong.”
As economist Larry Kotlikoff has repeated many times, governments can make the numbers they give for current spending, or current income, go up and down, appear and re-appear at will, all the while pensions, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid commitments, which titanically dwarf on-budget ‘expenditures’, never even appear in what is laughingly call ‘the budget’ (which, lame as it is, we don’t even have that this year, thanks to Congress).
Which is to say, any Modest Proposal MUST include what a government proposes to do about (quoting Kotlikoff) “its creditors, who, in this context, are current and future generations to whom it has explicitly or implicitly promised future net payments of various kinds.”
You want some really bad news? Arnold Kling has thought for some time that the fundamental problem is unfixable, because:
“The fundamental problem, which Kotlikoff expresses in somewhat different terms, is that there is no consumer protection agency for phony government marketing. If a private company tried something as unsound as Social Security or Medicare, it would be shut down and its officers put on trial. But the voting public is ignorant of government scams, and I see nothing that will change that. As my co-blogger points out, there is almost no incentive for the voting public to be anything but ignorant.”
Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/05/2010 at 05:30 PMSo, by you, it’s hopeless; there is no point in continuing; we may as well sup the hemlock?
M
Posted by Mark Alger on 08/05/2010 at 07:00 PMI agree that the list of the least productive 10% could be used to eliminate employees that managers don’t like or for political reasons. As I said the idea isn’t perfect just far better then all alternatives. But it has the advantage of identifying the management types who are not working with you. If management uses the list as a means of ridding the department of political opponents it will be obvious and it will indicate that management mus be fired as well. I would call this giving them enough rope to hang themselves.
Another change I would recommend is to place the border patrol under the Coast Guard. For whatever reason our Coast Guard is an exemplary organization doing a good job whereas the border patrol is often inept and by definition not doing a good job (a good job would mean no or few illegals getting across the border). Perhaps the institution of the Coast Guard is just a better model. Whatever the reason it is that kind of success we want to protect our borders.Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 08/06/2010 at 11:25 AM
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